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I attended Veteran’s Day celebrations at Lowell High School, as well as the Butler and Daley middle schools yesterday. Each event featured patriotic music and speeches, special guests of honor who included veterans, along with salutes to our flag.  As they were meant to do, these celebrations cause us to pause and remember the great gift we have in being members of a free, democratic society and to be grateful for those men and women who have sacrificed to protect those freedoms.  I couldn’t help but be moved by our children singing “home of the free and the brave” and “America, America, God shed his grace on thee,” or to remember the sacrifices of my own loved ones and the many I don’t know, who have fought and died for us, or returned from battle changed forever. The celebrations, moments of silence, and prayers for our soldiers are important, but the real way we honor our veterans is to teach our children about their sacrifice. What I saw in our schools yesterday were the diverse young people who make up our city and who are the faces of our nation’s future respectfully listening to the stories of our veterans and enthusiastically participating in the programs. We teach our children about our soldiers and the awful sacrifices of war, and by doing so, we honor our veterans in a way that is lasting and holds promise for a brighter, hopefully more peaceful, future.

Yesterday on WBUR, I heard Caprice Taylor, executive director of EMERGE Massachusetts, an organization dedicated to inspiring Democratic women leadership, talking about the need for women to run for elected office. In spite of Hilary Clinton’s inability to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for the nation’s top job, women across the country, and particularly in New England, continue to make important strides in gaining political leadership. For instance, our neighbor state of New Hampshire now boasts a majority of women elected to its state legislature. Women (11 of whom are Democrats) hold 13 of New Hampshire’s 24 seats—representing the first state legislature in the country to have a female majority.  (Women currently represent about one quarter of the Massachusetts state legislature.) Yet, here in our home state, we’re making historic strides as well. For an update on how women in Massachusetts fared during last week’s election, check the Mass. Women’s Political Caucus, a non-partisan group committed to increasing women’s involvement in politics. The good news is that even without the top job, women leaders are not alone or afraid to help each other.  In the Merrimack Valley, Congresswomen Niki Tsongas, as well as other elected women, endorsed newly elected State Representative Jen Benson, chair of the Lunenberg School Committee, in her race for Jamie Eldridge’s former seat. As relative newcomers to politics, first-time female candidates need the support and encouragement of established elected women—just as their male counterparts have enjoyed for centuries. I am not an “all-women-always voter” (ideology and candidate matter most), but I believe women, in general, bring strengths, sensibilities, and skills (such as consensus building) that we desperately need, and a balanced governing body is more effective.

A friend returned from an extended visit to Hong Kong last week and told me folks she met there thought the U.S. Government was a “bully.” The truthiness of that comment (to steal from Colbert) makes me cringe, even as I am reminded of a poll claiming Americans don’t care about global approval. As a mother of teenagers, the peer pressure issue has me conflicted. Obviously I want my kids to make smart choices regardless of what “everybody else does or says” and yet, when I think of the U.S. walking out on the Kyoto Treaty or snubbing the U.N. by invading Iraq, among other things, I wince. The fact is, I never liked bullies, and I don’t find it a particularly effective form of international relations. With this election’s drastic choice for change in U.S. leadership (particularly compared to McCain’s more-Hawkish-than-Bush approach to foreign relations), our government has an opportunity to redo its global relationships. World reactions to Obama as president-elect reflect this hopeful and watchful stance. Despite fears from domestic conservatives that he may be too soft or too willing to talk to our enemies, Obama is smart, tough, and invested in leaving a legacy of success. The only way he will do that is to strengthen alliances, lead wisely, and yes, dialogue with folks we don’t like. It won’t be easy, and a variety of views show high expectations and cynicism abound. But the reality is that a majority of Americans demanded a new type of leadership on Nov. 4, 2008, and that act alone has renewed world hope in the United States and the promise of democracy. Now is the time to end the bully-in-the-playground approach to world politics, and use brains and diplomacy for a change.

Over at the Huffington Post, Nora Ephron has written an amusing and insightful post about Bill Kristol, which caused me to remember that about 5 or so years ago I was wondering what a Neo-Con was. The term had started popping up here and there, but I was never really sure who they were, so deep in the shadows had they been operating. Then, in 2004, I was shocked to discover that my Libertarian Father was going to vote Republican. I soon traced the culpirt behind his unbelievable defection from longheld beliefs about the shortcomings of both parties – he had been reading The Weekly Standard, where editor Bill Kristol has carried the banner of the neo-conservatives into the limelight. It was he who, with Cheney and David Brooks, like a trio of Frankensteins, patched together the new Republican party from fear and bits of normally opposing ideologies creating a monster with the head of George W. Bush. (This clever metaphor is from Stephen Colbert). Now that the monster has been running amok and the pieces falling away, Bill Kristol continues to write his column in the New York Times and appear on John Stewart’s show to make less and less plausible arguments for his hawkish positions. Nora Ephron highlights Kristol’s role in getting us into Iraq, but also talks about how good it is to have him out in the open – on liberal talk shows and writing for the Times. She hopes as I do that he will continue these activities, where he can be watched. In the meantime, my Dad’s gone back to voting Libertarian.

In the recent Merrimack Repertory Theatre rendition of the long-running Broadway musical, The Fantasticks, the first act ends on a happy note. Boy gets girl, the wall between two familes comes down, the fathers remain friends, and the whole cast strikes a joyful pose. But, even before the curtain came down, there was wobbling, the grins started to seem a trifle forced, the audience knew that there was trouble ahead, and there was.

In the midst of my joy over the election results at every level, I feel a little wobbly. After all, look at the mess we are in both at home and in the world; it’s not going to be easy to pick up the pieces. We all know that Obama has a difficult task ahead of him. That said, I think he’s the man for the job. Pundits on AM radio are saying he only got elected because of his race and are questioning his experience and credentials (his, but not Palin’s, of course). Certainly, George W. Bush had a less than inspiring resume, and I remember thinking in 2000 that I hoped he had some good advisors- as it turned out he assembled a team of self-serving, behind-the-scenes operators who pulled the strings and kept him in a cocoon of his own delusions. As fantastic as it is for all Americans that the racial barrier has fallen, the election was about more than race. It was about a needed change from the last 8 years of failed policies and disasterous governing.

And for a happy ending that’s believable, you might care to see how The Fantasticks turns out – the show runs until November 9 and tickets are still available.

For a change, the weather is cooperating to help voter turnout. The loyal sign-holders are not shivering and stamping their feet to stay warm or huddled under dripping umbrellas, but basking in the autumnal sunshine.

Jackie’s out and about today, phone-banking for Obama, working the Election Day Bake Sale at the Daley School, and holding signs to vote “No” on Question 1. She just gave me the news that in Colorado, they are predicting a 90% turnout. From Secretary of State Galvin’s office, the prediction for Massachusetts is 83-88%! In Lowell, we have about 47,000 registered voters, of which around 12,000 turnout to vote for the local elections. I think it is at least twice that for a presidential year, but still nowhere near the 80% level.

My family and I just returned from voting at the Pine Street Firehouse (Ward 8-1). It was our son’s first time casting a ballot. There was no line and no bake sale, alas, but turnout in our precinct was already 455, which is pretty high. At the Sullivan School, one precinct that typically gets 1,200 voters had over 1,000 counted by noon, with long lines at the other precinct that votes at the school. Long lines were also reported at the Chelmsford polls during the morning rush hour.

Jackie said that bake sale profits at the Daley have already topped the typical total amount, so get out there and vote and buy a brownie or two to support your school’s PTO. For added incentive, Starbucks is giving a free coffee to those who have voted.

We’ve stated our reasons (here, here and here) for voting ‘no’ on Question 1, the ballot referendum to eliminate the State Income Tax. Given Jackie’s recent post about being baffled by differing political opinions, a feeling that I have had as well with Libertarian family members, I’ve made an effort to understand the views of those who are planning to vote ‘yes’. To that end, I’ve been reading a mostly civil (and very long) discourse by citizens planning to vote for and against the question. I can understand some of the arguments, especially the frustration with waste and corruption, but I still think that this ballot question is like using a ‘hatchet when a scalpel is needed.’ The following exchange sums it up for me:

Your representatives will tell you they can’t do it (balance the budget). Tell them, “Do it or get out”

>Of course they can do it. Anyone can put a balanced budget on paper. The real question is do we want them to do it? New Hampshire is an excellent example of the problem. Trying to fund education primarily on the regressive property tax does not work, and is fundamentally unfair to children, whose education will vary wildly from community to community……I have looked at local budgets for a long time, and there is not a lot of fat anymore. If we lose the income tax, STATE AID will be cut. And municipalities, who CANNOT raise their own taxes enough to make up the difference within the limits of prop 2 1/2 (a bar NH does not have!).

Yes they can do it. I don’t think they should.

The regressive nature of the funding that will likely replace the lost income tax dollars is what keeps getting lost in the proponents’ arguments. I am still voting “no” on Tuesday.

Decades ago, I visited a place where adults with mental disabilities made a living preparing large-scale mailings for businesses. I remember being impressed by their work ethic and their joy at being productive self-earners. I thought of that place recently when I read about Governor Patrick’s budget cuts that required layoffs at a Malden employment center for the blind, as well as other impacts to social services statewide. I know the Commonwealth faces a financial crisis due to a Wall Street fiasco with global impacts. I also believe the governor is a good and intelligent man, trying to do more with less in a climate overwhelmed with real fiscal problems (not counting the havoc if Ballot 1 passes—see here for earlier mention), but is this really what we’ve come to? How is it that our society cannot care for the least of us—even when it simply means giving them the opportunity to work? It reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem, unlike her in its dark brooding, but so indicative of the day:

Of the Empire, by Mary Oliver, from her book Red Bird

We will be known as a culture that feared death

and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity

for the few and cared little for the penury of the

many. We will be known as a culture that taught

and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke

little if at all about the quality of life for

people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All

the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a

commodity. And they will say that this structure

was held together politically, which it was, and

they will say also that our politics was no more

than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of

the heart, and that the heart, in those days,

was small, and hard, and full of meanness.